


la disparition

by schiarire



Category: La Peste | The Plague - Albert Camus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:37:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schiarire/pseuds/schiarire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Extracts from J. Tarrou's diary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	la disparition

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Hieronymus

 

 

« Et moi aussi, je suis comme eux. Mais quoi ! la mort n'est rien pour les hommes comme moi. C'est un événement qui leur donne raison. »

\-- Jean TARROU, _Carnets III._ 194., Oran.

~ 

_And I too, I am like the others. But what of it! Death is nothing to men like me. It's an event which proves we were right._

~ 

Dates. Traditional for breaking the fast in this country. Mystics of all schools practice the refusal of food. A global resemblance. Why? To catalyze detachment from the world of matter. Rejection. And if one's purpose is neither severance nor transcendence?

The relationship between body and purpose. Not merely a tool but a _habitation._

Human error: The creation of more and varied possibilities.

~ 

R. is not silent but _reticent_ on the topics most important to him. 

~ 

Sidi El Houari. A man crushed a cigarette underfoot, bent to retrieve the butt and threw it away. Never before seen.

~ 

L.'s habit: watching clock hands draw circles on the wall behind your head when you talk. A second-pincher.

~ 

Sun again. Today I like the dullest people best.

~ 

Ongoing: A scientific inquiry into the nature of _individualism._ Why men spit in cafés. Sundials. Superstitious sayings. Illness and its blessings.

~ 

The practice here of using touch to support oneself when the tram stops. Men and women do it, brush your arm or your back to keep from falling down. Very gentle.

Attempted. Thus far the method escapes me.

~ 

R. prefers sour food.

~ 

For the atheist the public sphere has the same significance as the spiritual or immaterial sphere for the theist. 

~ 

When C. is nervous his face grows hollow. Why? He bites the insides of his cheeks.

~ 

To be encouraged: discipline, trust. And pleasure.

~ 

Toothbrush and human hair caught whorled in the drain. Not all the evidence of living goes readily down the sink. 

~ 

Question: Which causes best unite strangers? Response: Chance. Delay. Trauma.

The effects of serendipity are otherwise.

To be distinguished: _happiness,_ _complacency._

~ 

A false etymology of the word _carnet._ Derived from the Latin _caro_ , or flesh. See also: _carnivore._

What lies can tell truer than fact.

~ 

As a child I painted model soldiers. Now there are days when the newspaper smells of the same fumes, lead. 

~ 

R.'s voice. Deep, with the melodic slant of Algerian French. Has he ever left Oran, I ask? Yes -- to visit Alger. But where would he like to go? Say, if he had a vacation. A long pause. This precondition, the absence of labor, is foreign to him. But what _if._ If he could go anywhere? After reflection, he said, Carthage. Why? In his youth he had been impassioned by the Punic Wars. 

Easy now to picture that studied, serious boy. With straight hair and no spectacles.

~ 

In the course of a conversation each man's speech adjusts to match the others'. When walking together each man adjusts his pace. In politics the same phenomenon occurs, but costumed. Show-difference, like show-jewelry.

~ 

To know whether a question is sustainable, invert it immediately.

~ 

A deficit not of _sympathy_ but _imagination._

~ 

At the beach: The girl who felt herself grown-up. Her brother and sister in the water; she on the sand, standing, rubbing her toes. Her lips turned down.

~ 

Happiness has its genesis within. Correspondingly, the orientation which results is inward. A turning away. A contradictory state: one feels lighter. And denser.

Tragedy comes from without. Hence its capacity for rupture.

~ 

When walking, W. gives the impression of running. 

R. wears his soles out from the heels forward. Normal.

~ 

Coffee is served in a bowl with two sugars. To be accurate: four cubes of sugar in two paper sleeves. Habitually, R. consumes one and pockets the other. What does he do with it? Did the custom begin with him or did he ape it?

R.'s mother. R.'s wife.

Question: Why has R. no children?

~ 

How to create a _we._

Volition and the natural order.

~ 

How are saints made? Self-fulfillment through self-denial. Realization through abnegation. 

~ 

To be undertaken: visiting persons very near to death. Their reasons for resistance. Which reasons are selfish? The word ill-applies. All that is not death is selfish, by which I mean: self-involved.

~ 

G. used to wear a prosthesis to replace his missing teeth. He felt like a different man, he says. Why did he stop? The same reason.

G.'s harmless appearance is a haven for him. He lives -- not hides -- inside it. A full set of teeth implies assertion. Of which G. is incapable.

~ 

Oran means _two lions._ A history of natural disasters.

~ 

Yesterday's suicide: A man leapt from a building. It can only be that everyone knew him, or why are they so generous with details of his life? He had a horror of being late, says the vegetable merchant. When he was late, which was often, he picked at the skin of his thumb as he excused himself, says the cleaner. He had green eyes. Brown. Green with brown rings. Before jumping, says the tinker, A. removed his shoes. 

~ 

Every man is his own first interest. His second interest: preservation. 

~ 

Inquired after the reason R. foregoes hats. Simple: he has an abnormally large head.

Remarkable: R.'s clean fingernails. Never any sand under the whites. 

~ 

I take pleasure in asking too many questions.

 


End file.
